When I think about the killings in Charleston, two images of South Africa, where I was born and raised - one anachronistic and repulsive, another timely and affirming - churn in my mind.
One is of a young Darryl Roof, the accused Charleston killer, who in various photographs brandished the Confederate flag -- but also wore the apartheid- era South African flag sown on his jacket. That flag was replaced with the brightly colored flag first flown on election day in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected.
Roof's embrace of the South African flag as a symbol of the racial war he hoped to incite is a twisted use of a historical artifact that even in its country of origin has completely lost its potency.
It is telling that unlike the much older Confederate flag, the flag worn by Roof is not flown in or near any official government buildings in South Africa. It is unimaginable that it would be.
And while it was associated with the apartheid regime, it long predated it. To many hard core racists in South Africa, the fact that it incorporated the Union Jack - the flag of the same country that defeated Afrikaners in the Boer War -- meant that it was less than a satisfactory symbol of national unity or racial supremacy.
For extreme white racists in South Africa, the swastika-like flag of the Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging (the Afrikaner Resistance Movement) had far more resonance and staying power. The organization reached its peak in the final years of apartheid rule, but is now totally discredited, and, like its flag, has almost no presence in current day South Africa.
The same applies to the flag of the former white-ruled Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe) that Root also can be seen wearing on his jacket next to the South African flag. That flag is also not a rallying force in any way in Zimbabwe or South Africa, where many Rhodesians ended up after the collapse of white rule in their country.
I would prefer to focus on another more affirming thread linking the South African liberation struggle to the Charleston massacre -- the extraordinary expressions of forgiveness by families of the victims and others in recent days.
Their spirit of forgiveness echoes the one so powerfully manifested by Nelson Mandela himself -- and underlay the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established to come to terms with South Africa's apartheid past.
Mandela's embrace of forgiveness and reconciliation was deeply shaped by Martin Luther King, Jr., whose spirit is so much in evidence in Charleston today.
Mandela was not a religious leader, but was deeply influenced by King - and by extension his non-violent philosophy which also was infused with Christian concepts of love and forgiveness. It was no accident that Coretta Scott King was at Mandela's side at his victory celebration in Johannesburg in 1994 when he famously declared, "Free At Last."
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance a year earlier, Mandela spoke at some length about his embrace of King's legacy, deeply rooted in the African American religious tradition. He ended his speech this way:
Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.
Let the efforts of us all, prove that he was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.
But while Mandela emphasized reconciliation and forgiveness, he also stressed the need to accompany them with an open acknowledgment of the truth. That was one of the pillars of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission that has become model for other countries attempting to come to terms with a repressive past.
The fact that the Confederate flag continues to be embraced by many whites -- not only those who espouse deranged white supremacist views like Darryl Roof but also elected officials at the highest levels of government -- suggests an unwillingness or inability to fully confront the nation's racial past.
Despite being motivated by a heinous and indefensible crime, the recent push by Gov. Nikki Haley to remove the Confederate flag outside the State Capitol in Charleston may be a sign of a new willingness to face the truth.
I can only hope that it is this thread, more than a deranged killer's adoption of an apartheid-era flag, that will connect the horrific events in Charleston with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and help lead the nation, in Abraham Lincoln's words the month before his assassination, "to finish the work we are in."